Tom Kinney, former Director of Invensys Advanced Technology Division
has joined ExperTune. At ExperTune, Tom is responsible for taking
ExperTune's customers to the next level in getting the most out of
their plants. Tom's prior experience with working with large clients,
worldwide, on a variety of process applications makes him ideally
suited to address client requirements with the breakthrough solution,
PlantTriage.

According to John Gerry, founder of ExperTune, "We put ourselves
inside the head of the control engineer and the plant manager and now
we have what they've been asking for: plant-wide, control loop
prioritization, followed by diagnosis and optimization of those loops.
This is PlantTriage, and Tom's charter is to insure that PlantTriage
continues to reinforce ExperTune's reputation for providing best of
breed solutions to the industrial marketplace."

PlantTriage is ExperTune's new control loop monitoring package that
prioritizes loops for process control engineers. With PlantTriage and
the same maintenance people the plant has now, performance will
improve since maintenance will be focused on the areas that will make
the biggest difference. And PlantTriage includes the tools to
optimize those areas. PlantTriage maximizes profit improvement
without adding brick and mortar or personnel.

What Are Your Biggest Payback Loops? (August 2002)

ExperTune's PlantTriage now shows you the Biggest Payback Loops in
your plant. This is a list of the top 10 loops to optimize.
Optimizing these loops with PlantTriage's advanced tools will give the
greatest economic return.

PlantTriage is ExperTune's plant wide loop monitoring and prioritizing
system ensuring optimal operation. It continually monitors and
assesses process loops, prioritizing them in the order of economic
benefit. It includes all the tools necessary to further diagnose,
trouble-shoot, linearize and tune the control loops.

Logon to PlantTriage through your web browser and click on "Biggest
Payback Loops." The higher the Average Economic Assessment, the
greater the benefit to your plant from improving the loop.

The Biggest Payback Loops window is the starting point for Process
Control Technicians or Engineers whose responsibility it is to
maintain the plant. They will focus their optimization analysis on
these loops using PlantTriage's optimization tools.

PlantTriage Process Prioritizer/Optimizer, Unleashed (July 2002)

ExperTune's PlantTriage software is now released into production after
successful testing at beta sites.

ExperTune's PlantTriage software results in a steady and continuous
improvement in the effectiveness of your control system. Plant
maintenance becomes pro-active. This, in turn, leads to improved
product quality, and a lower cost of doing business through energy savings,
reduced start-up times, and elimination of waste. PlantTriage runs
continuously, monitoring the process and reporting when the
performance of a loop begins to deteriorate.

PlantTriage prioritizes areas to work on that will yield the greatest
economic benefit to the plant. Using a browser (like Internet
Explorer) an engineer or technician simply clicks on Biggest Payback
Loops. The higher the loop appears in the list, the greater the
benefit to the plant by improving the loop.

PlantTriage includes integrated tools to diagnose, tune, linearize and
decouple the problems found. Includes all the tools of ExperTune's
award winning PID Tuner/Analyzer for advanced loop optimization. From
the Biggest Payback Loops, the engineer can drill down into more
detailed analysis.

PlantTriage includes benchmarking to quantify how the maintenance
effort has helped plant operations and as a check to see that the
plant is staying healthy. Production and plant management can dial in
with their browser to get tables and trends that quantifies plant
performance improvement.

PlantTriage uses industry standard OPC communication protocols to
gather data from your control system. Each PlantTriage server will
monitor up to 1000 loops continuously. Over 30 performance
assessments are always available for all loops, including variability,
average error, oscillation analysis, time in normal mode, closed-loop
performance index, valve travel, etc.

When Should You Use Derivative Action? (July 2002)

This web-based presentation explains when to use derivative action in your process plant. Derivative action can give the fastest response, but only if used responsibly. Too much derivative makes a loop unstable. Too little and it does little for the response and makes the valve jittery, wearing it out.

The presentation is available at no-charge, anytime, anywhere via a web browser and your Internet connection from:

The reason to use derivative (or D) is that you can use more
Proportional and especially more Integral action. The result can be a
much faster reacting control loop. The effect of properly applied D
(or derivative) action is most pronounced on second order processes
like temperature loops. But, D action can help the response of most
loops.

Track Your Plant's Performance in Your Web Browser (June 2002)

ExperTune's PlantTriage ® now lets you track the performance of
your plant, unit operation or loop in a web browser. PlantTriage
continually monitors the plant and assesses its performance.
Prioritize, trend or view your plant's performance history using your
web browser.

The browser-based views are self-customizable giving users the
information they need, when they want it, in a format they can use.
For example, these users have different needs and views on the plant:

Production Superintendent

Process Engineer

Process control Specialist or Technician

Operations Management will use the overview reports that show in a glance how a particular plant or unit is performing. The Process Engineer will view the Unit Operation Loop Performance List to see how his unit is performing and where the greatest gains are possible.

The Process Control Specialist or E&I Technician will want to see what loops will yield the greatest economic return if optimized. The Economic Performance Evaluation report will tell them which loops are the ones they should be analyzing and optimizing this week.

CD Shows Payback from Optimization (May 2002)

ExperTune and TOP Control have combined efforts to create a new CD:
"The Payback For Optimizing Loops, a Management Brief". The CD shows
how an investment of minutes per loop results in typical payback of
weeks. It details the results of a computer control system
installation with and without optimization of the control loops.

A manager has two choices for payback on the plant investment in
computer control:

1) Invest in continuous improvement: The plant benefits more each year.
2) Do not invest: The benefits drop off after the second year.

The typical cost of a computer controlled loop including the valve,
wiring, I/O, computer software and computer hardware is between
$10,000 and $30,000. It takes roughly 50 minutes to optimize this
loop with a cost of $100 to $300 or about 1% of the loop cost. The
return on investment for optimization is often in hours but usually in
a few weeks.

Over 50 process control terms are defined and explained. The glossary
also hot-links to full presentations on items that require more
detailed explanations like robustness, derivative, or choosing a
sample interval.

This glossary joins with over 40 tutorials, presentations, articles
and white papers on process control, available from:

Optimizing control loops is a tradeoff between loop performance,
robustness and valve wear. Now the ExperTune Control Loop Performance
Evaluation lets you explore and analyze these tradeoffs in one glance.

The Performance Evaluation is a before and after analysis using bar
graphs for easy comparison. The bars compare simulated industrial
control loops using your current PID settings compared to new
"what-if" PID settings. The loop's PV filter is also included in the
analysis. In the performance and robustness section, higher bars are
better. In the valve duty section, lower bars are better.

For both current and new settings, the performance bars show
performance relative to optimal, with 100% being optimal. The
robustness bars show how far away the loop is from being unstable.
The higher, the better.

In the valve duty section, valve travel and reversals are compared for
both current and new. Valve travel is the total distance the valve
moves in a normally operating control loop with noise. The lower the
bars, the better, since less distance would be traveled by the valve.
Valve reversals are the number of times the valve changes direction.
The less the valve changes direction, the less maintenance it will
need. So again, a lower bar is better.

ExperTune's new PlantTriage baselines the performance of your plant for
future comparison. Compare your plant against the baseline to see how the
changes you make improve the performance.

PlantTriage continually monitors and assesses the performance of each
area in the plant giving you complete control of how you baseline or
compare performance. For the assessment of each loop in the plant you
can set a baseline of performance and a threshold to not exceed.

Using PlantTriage templates, you can easily set-up the baselines for a
unit operation, group of loops, or the entire plant. Graphically zoom to a
time window when the plant was operating well, or where you want to
establish a baseline and press "set baselines".

Use PlantTriage default templates or completely customize your own for
complete control of baseline and threshold performance settings. The
templates let you customize the setting of baseline and threshold
assessments, from a time window you choose, by selecting minimum, maximum,
average, X number of standard deviations, a fixed value, or no change.
Apply the templates to a unit operation, entire plant or a group of loops
you define.

For example, you may want to baseline the average error of the PV for all
flow loops using assessments from last week. Select the appropriate
template, zoom in on the window of data from last week, and click "set
baselines". At the same time, your template could specify a threshold
limit over which you do not want the average error to exceed. For
example, you can set templates for flow, temperature, pressure, any group
of loops, unit operation or the entire plant.

PlantTriage continually monitors the plant and assesses the performance
against the baselines and thresholds you define. Trend any assessment
against its baseline, or prioritize loops needing attention based on how
close assessments are to thresholds.